Tuesday, September 3, 2013

James Bond is actually a guy named James Bond




Mild spoilers for Skyfall follow.
At the end of Skyfall, Bond takes the battle with super villain Silva to his own secret lair: the family mansion in the Scottish highlands (called Skyfall). There we briefly see the family cemetery, where we see the headstones of his parents, Andrew Bond and Monique Delacroix Bond. 
And so it is established, fully and once and for all, that James Bond is actually a guy named James Bond. It is not a name that is conferred by MI6, it is not a secret identity. It is simply a shittily-hidden actual identity. All of the previous James Bonds were definitely the same guy, and all future post-Craig Bonds will still be the same guy. 


It's worth noting that Bond's parents are canon from the books. In You Only Live Twice, there's an obituary for Bond written by M (echoed in Skyfall, by the way) and his parents are mentioned as being deceased. They were killed in a climbing accident, which I do not believe is mentioned in Skyfall. HIs aunt is mentioned in the film, though. 
And so you have it. With a quick shot of a headstone one of the biggest continuity questions about the Bond series is cleared up. There will never be a movie where Roger Moore or Timothy Dalton swoop in to tell the current 007 how things were done in their days. It's just one guy, and it's always been just one guy.

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